I Survived the Water Challenge!

Today marks the end of my participation in the Water Challenge, a week-long experiment between Olin Affordable Entrepreneurship & Design students and Wellesley Engineering students. The challenge required that we obtain all drinking, cleaning, and washing water from locations outside of our residential buildings. For me, this meant that I was not allowed to use the toilet, take showers, wash laundry, or use any sink water for drinking or washing in the Sustainability Co-op (Scoop) where I live. While the challenge seemed daunting and unmanageable, I embraced it as an opportunity to gain some sense of how difficult it is for people in underserved communities to live without access to clean water in or near their homes.

These are the strategies I used throughout the challenge:

Toilet

In Scoop, we have a policy of "if it's yellow, let it mellow" that made it pretty easy for me to use the toilets where I live. If I needed to flush, I used a bucket of water to manually flush the toilet. I obtained all of my personal-use water from a hose outside of the Greenhouses and carried it back to Scoop in 5 gallon buckets. But for the most part, I took advantage of toilets in the Science Center, Sports Center, and wherever else I found myself throughout the day.

Shower

While I tried to minimize the number of times I showered during the week, I took a couple short bucket showers in Scoop with water from the Botanic Gardens. These showers were very cold!! It took practice to figure out how much water I needed to wash all of the soap out of my hair. Once I had to turn on the shower very briefly because I ran out of bucket water. Ultimately I was able to shower with less than 2.5 gallons of water.

Laundry

Unfortunately I direly needed to do laundry during the challenge, so I lugged my laundry to McAfee and used the washer there.

Drinking water

The water I obtained from the Botanic Gardens hose was not potable, so I kept my water bottle attached to my hip all week, and filled it up in various buildings on campus throughout the day. I used this water to brush my teeth.

Hand-washing

I kept two half gallon milk bottles of water in the Scoop bathroom for washing my hands. Not having access to the sink forced me to use less water and soap while washing so that I wouldn't have to go fetch more water as often.

Scoop Chores

Since I live in a cooperative, I am not on the meal plan and have to do chores for the co-op such as washing dishes and cooking. When I washed my personal dishes I used water that I kept in a bucket in the kitchen, or I put my dishes in the dishwasher (but didn't turn it on). When I had to wash up after Scoop dinner, I would use sink water to clean big pots and dishes, and I would turn on the dishwasher. When cooking for Scoop I also used filtered sink water because I didn't want to use non-potable water in anything that people would be consuming. I felt that my responsibility to the co-op warranted me breaking the water challenge rules for the well-being of my fellow Scoopies.

Reflection

This challenge was an incredibly value experience because it compelled me to be so much more intentional about my water consumption. There were so many times during the week that I reached to turn on the faucet and then had to check myself, because I have deeply ingrained habits derived from always having had access to running water. Throughout the week, I kept a detailed journal of every time I used water, where I used it, and how much I used because I wanted to actually see how much water I was consuming. Recording my water use caused me to use increasingly less water as I realized that some of my water use (as when I take a shower that's more than 5 minutes long) is really unnecessary and wasteful.

Having to venture outside of Scoop for water forced me to structure time for water collecting into my daily schedule, which was surprisingly difficult to do even though the Science Center and Botanic Gardens are a 2 minute walk away. Often times I would forget (or be too lazy) to refill my water buckets during the day, and then I would want water for a shower or to brush my teeth in the evening, and I would have none left. This laziness left me in uncomfortable situations of having to stumble to the Botanic Gardens late at night or in the very early morning in the cold to obtain water for a much needed shower.

This very physical experience of having to carry heavy buckets of water to my dorm helped me to understand, in some very, very small and limited way, the massive challenges that people, mostly women and girls, in developing nations experience in having to walk ridiculous distances (an average of ~ 3.5 miles) to gather water for their families everyday. I only had to walk a laughable two minutes to obtain water, and I often found this burdensome. I cannot imagine having to budget hours for collecting water everyday - it would certainly limit what I could accomplish in a given day, and indeed, it significantly confines what women and girls in developing nations are able to achieve. For instance, many girls do not even have the opportunity to go to school because they are responsible for collecting water for their families.

After my water thrifty week, it seemed somehow wrong to be able to wake up this morning, and go into the bathroom and turn the faucet to wash my hands. It felt too easy, too mindless. With that one motion I felt that I had lost the connection to water that I have built in the past week from having to be so intentional and sparing with it. Once again water is an ever-plentiful, available resource in my life. Though the water challenge is over, I will try to hold onto the mindset of using water sparingly and intentionally and also, respecting water for how valuable and essential it is.